Expand<\/a><\/p>\nFlournoy and Ward made their impact in all facets of the game. Both play linebacker and are in on special teams. Flournoy had three sacks and returned two punts inside the 5-yard line, however both returns were called back due to penalties. Flournoy put a stamp on the game with a sack to force a turnover on downs on the final play of the game.<\/p>\n
After Flournoy rushed for 201 yards and three TDs in Corning\u2019s Week 1 victory against Enterprise, the Cardinals opened their first drive of the game with a 40-yard passing TD from Casey Long to Manny Rodriguez with 9:26 remaining in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
With 3:03 left in the second quarter, Flournoy capped an eight-play, 66-yard drive with a 7-yard TD in which he ran through two tackles run to give the Cardinals a 14-0 lead. The Cardinals took advantage of two personal foul calls against the Panthers on the drive.<\/p>\n
In the Cardinals\u2019 first possession of the second half, Flournoy got his second TD of the game with with 10:06 remaining in the third quarter. Flournoy weaved in and out of traffic and ran in untouched from 26 yards away.<\/p>\n
After the Cardinals\u2019 defense stopped the Panthers on three straight plays and forced a punt, it was Ward\u2019s opportunity. He ran once for four yards, once for two yards, once for 10 yards, once for three yards and once for eight yards before a 1-yard TD run to give the Cardinals a 28-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Ward got his second TD with 1:58 left in the third quarter when he waited for his blocker, ran right and scored on a 19-yard TD run to increase the Corning lead to 35-0.<\/p>\n
U-Prep scored early in the fourth quarter when Braeden Ballensky ran to the outside and scored on a 32-yard rushing TD, but on the Cardinals\u2019 first play from scrimmage after the score Flournoy had his longest run of the day, a 59-yard rushing TD to eclipse the 100-yard mark on the day (and second half).<\/p>\n
\u201cI noticed they were overplaying a lot, and you could tell they watched film and knew we were going, so cutting back, finding holes and blocks from my teammates and using their hard work to push myself.\u201d Flournoy said.<\/p>\n
Penalties were an issue for both teams, not only aggression penalties such as holding or late hits out of bounds, but also personal foul calls from both sides. The Panthers had a drive late in the first quarter and into the second quarter in which four penalties cost them 35 yards, and eventually they turned the ball over on downs. The Panthers had seven penalties in the first half and eight in the game, while Corning had three in the first half but six in the second half to finish with nine.<\/p>\n
Flournoy, a captain for the Cardinals, said his teammates learned that they need to keep their mouths shut, and he admitted they had too many penalties they shouldn\u2019t have. He said the team needs to hold each other accountable, and the players need to keep their heads on straight at all times and not let little things get to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe No. 1 message was \u2014 I\u2019m OK with hustle penalties, you\u2019re going to get called for holding and penalties if you\u2019re hustling and trying to make a play; I\u2019m OK with that,\u201d Studer said postgame. \u201cI\u2019m not OK with things like a push in the back inside the red zone that pushes you out of the red zone. That\u2019s a mental mistake. \u2026 I understand this is a macho sport and you\u2019re playing with high adrenaline and someone shoves you or says something and your natural instinct is to retaliate, but at some point our guys have to learn to put the team first and not put ourselves in those situations. It didn\u2019t hurt us enough tonight to cost us the game, but down the road it will.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORNING \u2014 The running back tandem of Kaleb Flournoy and Blake Ward blazed the path to victory as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2078],"tags":[375,390,2604,1443,1327,62494,62493,7,2682,3131,929,4247,4438,6,46492,62495,9,62496],"class_list":{"0":"post-346788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arizona-cardinals","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-arizona-cardinals","10":"tag-arizonacardinals","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-cardinals","13":"tag-corning","14":"tag-corning-high-school","15":"tag-football","16":"tag-high-school-football","17":"tag-high-school-sports","18":"tag-latest-headlines","19":"tag-local-news","20":"tag-newsletter","21":"tag-nfl","22":"tag-northern-california","23":"tag-sacramento-valley","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-tehama-county"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115158371485410637","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/CORNING-03.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Corning](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/CORNING-05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Corning](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/CORNING-04.jpg\")
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